Cold Season

-Devlyn Steele

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex and rich food.

He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

-Johnny Carson

Is it a cold or is it the flu? No matter how healthy we are, we all catch colds from time to time. In fact, more than just a few. The average kindergarten child catches an average of 12 colds a year, and adults and adolescents have an average of seven colds per year. So it is safe to say catching a cold is a normal part of life.

When we catch a cold, we don't change our perspective of who we are. Meaning, that if we think of ourselves as a relatively healthy person we do not change that point of view because we have caught a cold. We don't start saying that because of the cold that we are now an unhealthy person. We simple see ourselves as a healthy person who happens to have a cold. Even a really bad cold, or a flu will not change that opinion.

We would tend to say things like, "I have a really bad flu or cold, but I'll get better soon." If we feel a slight cold, we want to fight the cold and get some rest. We say things like, "This will be just a 24 hour bug," or, "I can't afford to get sick now, I can fight this." Yes, as generally healthy people, we are optimistic about our ability to get better, and often quickly, no matter how we feel in the moment.

In fact, we also believe that our state of mind is a very important part of getting better or fighting a cold. We think that if we give in, we will get sicker. So we tend to power through with optimism believing that will help combat getting sick, or staying sick. This attitude is not a one time affair, as we already presented that we catch an average of seven colds a year, we do this over and over again. The behavior is further reinforced by the fact that we do get better each time, so we really have a firm belief that any state of not feeling well is temporary and that we do get better.

Then even faced with not feeling well, we are very attached to our responsibilities and often will not let how we are feeling keep us from our jobs or things that we have to get done. True, we don't feel well, but we put up with it and continue on and push through our days. Physically we are very resilient, we battle not feeling well, and we get better each time.

Just like everyone catches colds, everyone also feels sad occasionally. We all suffer heartbreaks, losses, setbacks and at times a general feeling of not being satisfied with what is going on in our lives. We could say that just like physical colds and flus, we catch emotional colds and flus. However, we treat emotional colds completely different, but we should not. We should attach the same pattern of behavior and belief system to our emotional colds.

We should not change our general opinion of ourselves. When we have an emotional cold we should not see ourselves as a unhappy person. How about like being sick and seeing ourselves as a healthy person who happens to be sick, why not see ourselves as generally a happy person who has an emotional cold.  We should believe that we will be better soon, because we will. Think about all the different sad episodes you have had in your life, just like all the colds you have had, you do recover. Just like a physical cold, we have to fight through our emotional colds.

We can also continue to get the things we need to done. In fact, doing what needs to be done helps us get emotionally better. The more we detach, the worse we feel. So change the way you discuss your emotional states and see them as temporary as you do physical colds. Believe you will get better soon and put up a fight.

In the end, we will all catch both emotional and physical colds, some will be worse than others. Being sick emotionally or physically are just like a weather storms, they blow into your life, but we know that they also blow right on past us after a period of time. We can weather the storms and we get better.